Celebrating the Best of Women in Film

The Alliance of Women Film Journalists (AWFJ) recently unveiled their winners for their annual EDA Awards. The organization is an association of women who work in the film industry as critics, reporters, and feature writers that is "dedicated to raising the volume on women's voices in the film community by broadening opportunities for women who write about film and supporting films by and about women – both in front of and behind the cameras." This is accomplished through outreach programs, intra-group promotional activities, and, of course, their annual EDA Awards.
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The awards, named after AWFJ founder Jennifer Merin's actress mother Eda Reiss Merin, honor women in cinema for their achievements in front of and behind the camera. The 25 awards are divided into three categories: a general "Best Of" category, the Female Focus awards and the EDA Special Mention Awards, a category featuring awards like "Actress Most in Need of a New Agent" and "the AWFJ Hall of Shame Award."

The big winner of the Best Of Awards was Alfonso Cuarón's Netflix-hit Roma, which won five awards, including Best Film, Best Director for Cuarón, Best Cinematography, Best Editing, and Best Non-English-Language Film. The period film The Favourite also won several awards across the categories, including Best Actress for Olivia Colman (who also won the "Bravest Performance" award in the EDA Special Mention Awards section), Best Woman Screenwriter for Deborah Davis, who also shared the award for Best Original Screenplay with Tony McNamara.

The Female Focus Awards also featured recognition for women like Marielle Heller, who won Best Woman Director for the film Can You Ever Forgive Me? The section also awarded its prized Outstanding Achievement by A Woman in The Film Industry to Rachel Morrison, the Oscar-nominated director of photography for Mudbound and for her work on Marvel's Black Panther (which also won Best Ensemble Cast and recognized Casting Director Sarah Finn).

Lastly, the EDA Special Mention Awards recognized actresses like Viola Davis with the award for Actress Defying Age and Ageism for her work in Widows. The section also featured some of the more irreverent awards, including awarding Jennifer Lawrence the award for Actress Most in Need of a New Agent for her work in Red Sparrow and the Anna Faris comedy vehicle Overboard for Remake or Sequel That Shouldn’t Have Been Made. The section was rounded out by the AWFJ Hall of Shame Award to All Alleged Abusers, specifically mentioning Harvey Weinstein, Louis CK, Kevin Spacey, James Franco, Charlie Rose, and more, referring to the information that came out during the #MeToo movement.

“Representing women film critics’ perspectives on the world’s constantly evolving cinema scene, the Alliance of Women Film Journalists is proud that our 2018 EDA Awards nominees and winners genuinely reflect the movie industry’s advances in the cause of equality and diversity,” said Jennifer Merin. “All in all, 2018 produced a bumper crop of female-directed and female-centered films. ... Too few of them reached the mainstream, but we hope that AWFJ and the EDA Awards can help to rush such films into the current.”